objects as mutable dictionary keys

[Peter Maas]

There was a huge and sometimes heated debate about tuples, lists and
dictionaries recently, and the mainstream opinion was that dictionary
keys must not be mutable, so lists are not allowed as dictionary keys.

BUT: objects are allowed as dictionary keys, aren't they? See the
interpreter session below:

class x(object):
... 	pass
...
 >>> x1 = x()
 >>> x1.prop = 'a'
 >>> d = {}
 >>> d[x1] = 'x1'
 >>> for i in d.iteritems():
... 	if i[0].prop == 'a':
... 		print i
... 		
(<__main__.x object at 0x011AC330>, 'x1')
 >>> x1.prop = 'b'
 >>> for i in d.iteritems():
... 	if i[0].prop == 'b':
... 		print i
... 		
(<__main__.x object at 0x011AC330>, 'x1')

This strikes me because if one can do this with instances of user
defined classes why not with lists? Trying to use lists as dict
keys yields "TypeError: list objects are unhashable". So why are
list objects unhashable and user defined objects hashable? For
user defined objects hash(x1) = id(x1), why not do the same
with lists?

I think it's because of the existence of list literals. If you
would use id() as a hash function for lists how should d[[1,2,3]]
be stored? For instances of user defined classes there is no
literal and accordingly no problem to use id() as a hash function
and instances as dictionary keys.

Is that correct?

-- 
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Peter Maas,  M+R Infosysteme,  D-52070 Aachen,  Tel +49-241-93878-0
E-mail 'cGV0ZXIubWFhc0BtcGx1c3IuZGU=\n'.decode('base64')
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